Bummer

Haih apa mau buat… 😦 Too many financial commitments lately.Wonder when they will come to Malaysia. There were rumours of them appearing at this year’s Sunburst. Yes, rumours indeed. Not true at all.

Coldplay rocks my socks!!

VIVA LA VIDA

Made to mesmerise

By MICHAEL CHEANG

Coldplay, with frontman Chris Martin in top form, pulled off an unforgettable, aweinspiring show in Singapore.

WERE you not entertained? Like Roman gladiators, Coldplay came to Singapore (again), played to almost 12,000 roaring fans and left the arena no doubt feeling like kings.

If Chris Martin, Will Champion, Jonny Buckland and Guy Berryman didn’t feel like they ruled the world already, I bet they did after the band’s concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Monday night, which was their third date in the island republic already.

It’s hard not to compare this concert with their second one in 2005 at the same venue (they first came here in 2001 to open for Travis. How far they’ve come since then … and where’s Travis now?). Where the previous show the London-based band had just three albums (of which songs from the latest at the time – the less radio-friendly X&Y – made up the bulk of the songs); this time around they came armed with the Grammy award-winning Viva La Vida with more stadium anthems than you can shake a stick at.

Coupled with its repertoire of old hits, this made for a much more complete and stadium-friendly set list, which resulted in a solid two-hour set packed with intimate moments, soaring stadium anthems and massive sing-alongs.

Veteran New York-based alternative rock band Mercury Rev opened the show at 8.15pm sharp, while most of the audience was still filtering into the Singapore Indoor Stadium. If you missed its performance, you missed the perfect appetiser to Coldplay’s show. Mercury Rev got the party started with a blend of soaring, dreamy space rock anthems, playing for 30 minutes and setting the tone for the main course that was to come next.

Kicking off things with the instrumental Life in Technicolor, just as it does on the Viva La Vida album, Coldplay wasted no time in breaking out with the hits. First up was Violet Hill, the first single from the new album, which segued straight into the chiming piano intro of the classic Clocks, both tracks sounding more majestic live than they ever did on the album.

After yet another hit from A Rush of Blood to the Head – In My Place, the glorious strands of Yellow subsequently exploded into life, much to the delight of the enthusiastic crowd.

Three years on, Chris Martin and mates seem to have matured greatly as live performers. Their music may not be particularly hard core (Martin once said they were like Vegemite – “some people love them, some people don’t”), but it’s hard to fault their live performances.

Martin, in particular, seems to have grown in stature since his more subdued showing in 2005. Here, he was more assured, more spontaneous, and a lot more confident with his performance. Whether he was playing a piano solo on The Hardest Part, playfully breaking yellow balloons with his guitar during Yellow, or telling a story about how he was “forced” to become the lead singer (“who takes all the abuse and all the drugs”) after losing a game of Monopoly; this was Chris Martin at the top of his game.

In fact, he was doing so much on stage – singing, playing the guitar, piano, harmonica, talking – that it might as well have been called The Chris Martin Show instead. It was so easy to forget about the other three members of the band.

There were some efforts to make the presence of the rest of the band felt though, and at the same time bring the band closer to the audience.

One of the most memorable moments in particular was when it played on a mini-podium right in the middle of the crowd, a segment which saw it play an excellent acoustic version of Speed of Sound, cover the Monkees’ I’m a Believer, and even switch roles for a song (Champion took the mic to sing the folkish DWNC, while Martin played the harmonica).

From the uplifting chorus of Fix You (which I personally rank as one of the greatest stadium anthems ever), the quiet aching of Martin’s solo on The Hardest Part, and the joyous celebratory mood of Strawberry Swing, there was no shortage of memorable moments in this concert.

None though, could match the massive roar that shook the very foundations of the stadium when the intro of Viva La Vida was played. From the pseudo-military beat, the soaring chorus, to that oh-so-catchy “WO-OH-OOAAAAA” bridge – it was a song practically written with audiences like this in mind.

So powerful was Viva La Vida, that instead of merely clapping or shouting “Encore!”, the crowd actually chanted “WO-OH-OOAAAAA” to cajole the band out for the encore.

In fact, nothing that came after it could quite match the high that it created; not the subsequent equally popular Lost, the concert closing Death and All of His Friends, nor encores of The Scientist and Life in Technicolor II.

And even long after the concert had ended, that same chant was heard throughout the stadium grounds as the buzzing concert-goers relived that single magical moment.